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www.kevacho.com
©2002-2024
Kevin Michael Vance
Writer - Portland, Oregon
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August 10, 2017
THE CASUAL HUMANITARIAN
So, I've noticed this before at the store in which I work. There seems to be a lot of people who like to consider themselves to be humanitarians or even, dare I say it, liberals, who believe they're inherently good. Furthermore, they seem to enjoy espousing how they would go out of their way to help another human being in distress. But I'm here to say none of them, not one that I have seen, would so much as lift a finger to back up their high ideological opinion of themselves. Here's an example, and this happened to me just last week.
There I was, throwin' shit on a shelf (that's my job, much to my chagrin), trying to ignore the plethora of rude audacious customers who consider themselves far... FAR above me, because of some ill-perceived, unrealized system of class to which they desperately and ignorantly still cling. When lo and behold this affluent young lady steps up to me and proceeds to tell me about a man passed out on the sidewalk on the side of the store. I proceeded to give her a look that I hoped conveyed quite clearly, "what the fuck do you want me to do about it?" She absently told me that "someone" should do something. Then shuffled away without a second thought, pulling her cell phone from her purse.
That's it folks, in a fuckin' nutshell. If this young lady was so concerned, so overwrought, why did she not use that same phone to call the police, whose job it is to deal with passed out drunks on the sidewalk? It is not the responsibility of the corporation for whom I work to deal with drunks on the public sidewalk, nor is it my responsibility. She obviously cared very little for the man, however, I am assuming her ego, massaged quite vigorously, was assuaged by what she deemed to be the "right" thing. And the right thing for her it would seem is to tell one stranger wearing an apron about another stranger, who may or may not be dieing on a public sidewalk, thereby alleviating what little guilt she might feel about actually doing nothing, and then blissfully going on about her day as if nothing untold ever happened.
As I titled it, "The Casual Humanitarian". She is a humanitarian, but only when it suits her... or when it's convenient.
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